PC Build Guide – May 2012

It’s the beginning of May, and that means it’s time for a new build guide! As before, we have implemented hard price limits ($800, $1300, $1800) on ourselves and have had to make tough decisions with each build. Your personal budget will likely be flexible, but it is our hope that this article will give you a baseline. You can of course spend more or spend less, but you run in to a case of diminishing returns at either end. Please keep in mind that pricing information is immediate and may not necessarily reflect real prices by the time you have read this article.

The Starter sees few changes this month, as we still find that the combination of a 2500K and a Radeon 7850 provides the best value at this price point. We also found room in the budget to move up to a beefier 500W power supply, which leaves us with a little more breathing room compared to the 430W we had in last month’s build.

Similarly, the Enthusiast sees virtually no change this month, save for the fact that we’re able to move up to a 128GB SSD (compared to last month’s 64GB), thanks to SSD prices finally dropping to under $1/GB.

Lastly, we come to the Professional, which sees the inclusion of the new top-end Ivy Bridge CPU, the 3770K, in place of last month’s 2600K and a new Z77 motherboard from Gigabyte to go along with it. We had a higher capacity SSD in last month’s build (180 GB), but we drop down to 128GB to take advantage of the aforementioned excellent pricing on the Crucial M4 right now. We leave you with a little cash left over to splurge with how you see fit–maybe for one of those badass superclocked 680s if you can ever manage to find one in stock!

I was thinking about getting the 560ti but If I get that i’ll have to get a cheap crappy PSU and I’d rather go all out on a good PSU, depends on how much money I actually have when it comes to buying it, thanks guys :)

This will be my first build and I’m thinking of building the $1300 one, but I don’t fully understand what the SSD does. All that I’ve heard is it makes the computer boot up faster, which isn’t very important to me. So I was thinking building it without the SSD. Also if I did build it without the SSD would this mean I could use a smaller power supply or would it need 750 watts regardless.
Thanks

An SSD will make your OS and the programs that are stored on it load much faster than a traditional HDD. It will affect everything from in-game loading times to how long it takes to open your internet browser or MS Word.

Adding an SSD shouldn’t change which power supply you get; your graphics card will drive that decision, for the most part. With the Enthusiast build, I’d personally stick with a 750W PSU.

Thanks for the guide bros. I’ll probably be purchasing the Starter Build very soon. I’ve needed a new build for a while. I’m currently rockin’ a HP laptop with a Radeon 4200HD
and a Turion M500. I can’t run TF2 with a high fps config in 800×600 window lol.

If you have a Micro Center in your area….Head there now. You can get a i5 3570k for $190 and the Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H for $60 for buy the i5. Saves you $35 and you will be able to grow with this. SSD is the right choice along with a bigger PSU. But do not forget you will need Operating Software and other accessories. Monitor as well if you do not have one.

Nice builds. I currently run a X4 955 @3.8ghz with 8GB 1600 Ripjaws and a EVGA GTX 570 HD. If my budget is a little bit more than the i5 2500K with a Z68 board would it be smart to go with a i5 3570K and the same board as on the pro build?

Get Ivy Bridge and maybe a Z77 motherboard as it supports PCIe 3.0 which doesn’t matter right now, but down the road when GPUs start using it you will be glad you spent the extra monayy on it.

vol1tion

Brandon

Brandon started his PC gaming days playing Doom II (IDDQD/IDKFA for life) and has been hooked on online gaming since the original Starsiege: Tribes. The way to his heart is through proper grammar, corn dogs, and cookie cake.

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